


bound to linger on

by Naladot



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Complicated Relationships, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Memory Alteration, Non-Graphic Violence, Pre-Canon, Red Room (Marvel), Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 06:28:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20670830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naladot/pseuds/Naladot
Summary: At her best, she does not feel any tinge of emotion within the smooth, orderly system of the Red Room. At her best, there is not even blood specked on her clothes.The Black Widow, the Winter Soldier, and the invisible life.





	bound to linger on

The language used in the Red Room is as thin and oblique as Natalia herself: Assignment. Strategy. Operation. Termination. Mission Report. At her best, she does not feel any tinge of emotion within the smooth, orderly system of the Red Room. At her best, there is not even blood specked on her clothes.

“What happened?” The Winter Soldier says, his face in shadows. A cold wind creaks through the walls of the old manor, on an estate far away from the Red Room, far away from order and predictable outcomes.

“He is dead,” Natalia says. She moves a hand to brush a stray hair out of her eyes, and smears the dead man’s blood on her cheek. The Winter Soldier does not flinch.

“Messy,” is all he says.

They begin the Rectification. Cleaning and Correction.

When they are done, the target has simply vanished as though he never existed. 

And so have they.

  
  
  


So it is. Natalia falls asleep against the cold wall of a train car rattling across Poland.

The Winter Soldier sits across from her, his eyes trained on the door of the car, slid open to reveal a crack of the countryside disappearing into the night.

  
  
  


Natalia does not mention her mistake, because the order of the Red Room’s protocol makes her acknowledgment unnecessary. The target should have appeared to die in his sleep of a heart attack, but instead he disappeared with no evidence trail. A secondary option, used only in the event of a mistake. Now there is a mystery left behind where there should have been none. Natalia followed protocol, but chose the less preferable path.

“You will do better,” says the Director.

“I will do better,” says Natalia.

The Winter Soldier is absent, and does not have the opportunity to reply. Natalia notes this, a stray thought, and brushes it away.

  
  
  


The next day, she is given an Assignment. The target is in Berlin. Natalia dyes her hair blonde in the sink of the medical ward.

She travels alone, paying passage to ride in the back of a truck alongside crates she suspects hold illegal goods. She does not open the crates. She does not let her thoughts venture down winding paths.

Beside her is another woman lost in the back roads of the world. Natalia does not ask questions and does not look the woman in the eyes, reading an animal-like desperation in the angle of the woman’s neck. Some part of Natalia despises this woman, trapped as she is, living on the scraps of humanity without any way to pull herself out of the refuse.

This is another stray thought. They arrive in Berlin under the cold winter sun.

  
  
  


For this Assignment, Natalia follows protocol perfectly. The Target dies with her eyes open, staring at the cracked plaster in the hospital ceiling.

And so it is. Natalia fades away.

  
  
  


She is the best. The Black Widow among lesser spiders. This is not a question of preference but a question of statistics. More Terminations than she can count or remember, to the glory of Russia. To the success of the Red Room.

Her only superior is the Winter Soldier, who appears like a ghost beside her on some missions, who steps out of the shadows in her training sessions to grab her by the throat and hiss _you are better than this_ in her ear until she fights her way out of his grasp, who rides beside her on long train rides across European countryside, counting up the minutes until their Assignment is complete.

“You ever thought about jumping off this train?” He asks her once, in a storage car, somewhere near the Russian border.

“What would that achieve?” Natalia asks, her heart pounding strangely in her chest.

He is silent for a long time, watching the fields race by.

“Nothing,” he says, his blue eyes pale with some kind of desperate ache Natalia cannot fathom.

She looks out the door to the countryside, and wonders what it would feel like to jump.

  
  
  


Los Angeles. The city seems as alien to her as if she were to fly into outer space. The concrete, the street signs, the hum of electricity burning in the night. She straps a gun to her thigh and puts on a threadbare black dress, chosen to make her invisible. Unimportant.

Somewhere above her, the Winter Soldier is waiting in an office building, his finger on the trigger.

In all, the Procedure takes them five minutes. Three minutes for the set-up, five seconds for the Termination, two minutes and fifty-five seconds for the Exit and Extraction. Soon they are crossing the border into Mexico. Natalia drives, her hands steady on the wheel.

“Stop here,” says the Winter Soldier, as they cross the road in the middle of nowhere. He steps out into the desert, and takes a big gulp of air, the moon reflecting off the metal of his hand peeking out beneath his sleeve. For the first time it occurs to her that the Winter Soldier is a man who can die just like all the other men she’s killed, and she doesn’t know what to do with this stray thought.

How can the very best be as vulnerable as everyone else?

  
  
  


They sleep in the truck, hidden in a copse off a side road. From here, they will travel to Cuba, to clean up a mess someone else left behind. Then to the Red Room.

The Winter Soldier opens the door of the truck and slips outside, melting into the night.

Natalia follows.

She finds him a short distance away, standing by the side of the road, his metal arm glinting in the light of the moon. No sign of civilization for miles. Only the two of them, and the road, and the stars and the moon.

He looks at her. “What?” He demands.

His word raises goosebumps on her skin. The way he spat it, like blood from his mouth. English. She feels very far away from herself, lost on a road through the desert, staring down the one man who could kill her without a struggle.

“Are you going to run?” She asks. Russian.

He shrugs one shoulder, the flesh one, and does not look away.

She lights a cigarette with a trembling hand and walks close enough to hand it to him. He takes a long drag, the orange ember dangling from his mouth, and then hands it back to her.

They go on like this, sharing a cigarette, until they’ve returned to the truck, where they fuck in the flat metal bed. She has gone to bed in silk sheets and taken lovers who moan her false names before they die; this time, she tastes ash in her mouth and scratches into his back. The Winter Soldier. Natalia gasps in the bright light of the stars.

  
  
  


“I remember,” he says in the thin light of dawn, huddled inside a leather jacket, smoking another cigarette plucked from the pocket of her pants. Russian.

She looks up. “Remember what?”

He frowns, his eyes lost somewhere behind her. “Before.”

She begins to wonder what he means, and then stops herself. “Why would you want to remember that?”

“It’s not about wanting. I remember.”

But she can see the wanting in his eyes. It shakes her all the way to her bones. The way he looks at the open countryside. The way he looks at her.

“You should forget,” is what she says.

  
  
  


**MISSION REPORT.**

_He remembers._

  
  
  


At her best, she does not have to feel any tinge of emotion within the smooth, orderly system of the Red Room. At her best, there is not even blood specked on her clothes.

The Winter Soldier goes for the throat, fingernails digging into her skin until he draws blood.

And he does not need to speak for her to see the terror in his eyes, as vast and primal as the stars in the Mexican sky—

As they drag him away, Natalia gasps for air, and tells herself, _to the glory of Russia. _

She is the best. She survives.

  
  
  


Paris.

Natalia sees a man she has never seen before, only heard about. _The Winter Soldier,_ she whispers to herself, her body humming with a fear she indulges. A myth of a man, appearing out of the shadows, silent as a ghost.

“What happened?” he asks.

“He is dead,” she says.

The Winter Soldier nods his approval of her work. “Perfect.”

And so it is.

  
  


_End_.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Until We Bleed.


End file.
